The Constitutionnal Council, highest jurisdiction in France gave its decision1 concerning the HADOPI three strikes
law, final stage before the promulgation of the law. It decided that presumption of innocence is more important than the idiotic schemes from the entertainment industries to artificially prolong their obsolete models. All sanctioning power (ie. disconnecting internet users) has been removed from the HADOPI
Sweden’s Pirate Party has won a seat in the European Parliament. The group — which campaigned on reformation of copyright and patent law — secured 7.1% of the Swedish vote. The result puts the Pirate Party in fifth place, behind the Social Democrats, Greens, Liberals and the Moderate Party
The Pirate Party has won a huge victory in the Swedish elections and is marching on to Brussels. After months of campaigning against well established parties, the Pirate Party has gathered enough votes to be guaranteed a seat in the European Parliament
An American ISP allegedly involved in distributing spam and images of child abuse has been thrown off the net. The US Federal Trade Commission asked for Pricewert LLC’s net links to be severed after it had gathered evidence of the firm’s criminal
connections. The FTC alleges that Pricewert had created one of the leading US-based havens for illegal, malicious, and harmful content
. Pricewert denied the allegations and said it would fight them in court
Google has expanded Google Flu Trends, its online tool for tracking influenza outbreaks, to Australia and New Zealand. Google said it had built a flu model for the state of Victoria by working with its own search data and historical flu data from the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory. We then extrapolated this model to produce flu models at a national and state level for the rest of Australia,
Google said in a blog post. Tasmania and Northern Territory were not included, Google said, because there was not a large enough volume of search queries to be accurate
Commonwealth Bank customers are being inundated with phishing attacks, some at a rate of several scam emails a day, sent by cyber criminals seeking to steal passwords and credit card details. The scammers, who are specifically targeting the bank in a sustained assault, are bombarding customers with several clever variations of the email ruse — such as using bogus call centres — in an attempt to hook even tech-savvy web users. The emails have largely managed to evade spam filters using methods such as images instead of text
Chinese censors blocked access to Twitter and other popular online services today, two days before the 20th anniversary of the crackdown on democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. The move came amid increasing pressure on dissidents, in a reflection of the authorities’ anxiety ahead of the sensitive date. Hundreds died as the army forced its way through Beijing to clear away demonstrators from the capital’s political heart in June 1989, but the issue is taboo on the mainland. The photo-sharing site Flickr, email service Hotmail and other services were also unavailable this evening
Google will be offering integrated public transport information — that is, maps and real-time timetables — for Canberra and Sydney from later in June
. The Canberra service will cover the entire ACTION bus network, which is good news. The Sydney announcement unfortunately is less impressive: it only covers the inner-city monorail and tram services, which to be perfectly honest are overpriced tourist traps with zero integration with the rest of the system
The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) today decided not to oppose the Vodafone/Hutchison merger — a move welcomed by the two companies. The competition watchdog concluded that the merger of the two telcos’ mobile networks was unlikely to substantially lessen competition in the relevant markets
, in part because the two would not have maintained the same level of competition they do today over the longer term
The EU passed the Data Retention Directive years ago, a law that demands ISPs and search engines hold onto data long enough to help the cops (but not long enough to cause privacy problems). But Sweden never passed it into national law, and the European Commission has now sued the country to make sure a bill appears
Facebook has gotten $200 million from a Russian investment group in exchange for a small stake in the nation’s largest social networking company. The deal places the value of the site, known for allowing people to connect through SuperPokes
and virtual gifts, at $10 billion. Digital Sky Technologies, with headquarters in Moscow and London, will get a 1.96 percent stake in the company for its investment. It will not have a seat on Facebook’s board
France’s Church of Scientology today went on trial on charges of organised fraud in a case that could lead to the nationwide dissolution of the controversial organisation. The Church’s celebrity centre
spiritual association and its Scientology Freedom Space bookshop in Paris stand accused of targeting vulnerable people for commercial gain. Six leading members, including the celebrity centre’s director, Alain Rosenberg, also face charges of illegally distributing pharmaceuticals
HM Revenue and Customs has won a legal battle with Proctor and Gamble over the liability for value-added tax (VAT) purposes of its Pringles
potato chips. The Court of Appeal has ruled that Pringles are, in fact, a potato-based snack despite the fact that they are only 42% potato, and are therefore liable for VAT at the standard rate, currently 15%. Procter and Gamble had attempted to prove in a long-standing battle that their crisps should be allowed VAT-exemption — due to the fact that they are really more dough than potato. The argument was based around the fact that Pringles had been placed within the category of potato crisps, potato sticks, potato puffs and similar products made from the potato, or from potato flour, or from potato starch,
by a VAT and Duties Tribunal in 2007
The Ben Rose Home — site of the famous movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Cantilevered over the ravine, these two steel and glass buildings — which can never be duplicated — have incredible vistas of the surrounding woods. This is a unique property designed by A James Speyer and David Haid, both notable architects of the 20th Century
The Rudd Government has indicated that it may back away from its mandatory internet filtering plan. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy today told a Senate estimates committee that the filtering scheme could be implemented by a voluntary industry code. Senator Conroy’s statement is a departure from the internet filtering policy Labor took into the October 2007 election to make it mandatory for ISPs to block offensive and illegal content. Responding to questions from shadow communications minister Nick Minchin on how the government may go about imposing the internet filtering scheme, Senator Conroy said that legislation may not be required and ISPs may adopt an industry consensus to block restricted content on a voluntary basis
For the business traveler, Wi-Fi is important — crucial, even. But more important than sustenance? That’s exactly what was found in a recent survey by American Airlines and HP, where some 47% of business travelers responded that Wi-Fi was the most important airport amenity, outscoring basic travels needs such as food by nearly 30 percentage points
New Zealand last week got the option to access full two-way Twitter service via local SMS, but Twitter promises that Australia is still under consideration for a similar arrrangement
Greenlanders are hooking up to the Internet in droves since the Greenland Connect sea cable was connected to the island on 24 March. Within the first month of its operation, Internet use jumped 25 percent. Sermitsiaq reports Tele Greenland’s new ADSL Premium service is particularly popular, luring hundreds of customers with its faster speed and larger capacity for downloading at a single set rate. In anticipation of a big increase in their Internet customers, Tele Greenland has already approached the government and asked it to lower rates by 35 million kroner
The UK government has pushed back on requests that a historic site used by Britain’s top code-breakers during World War II should be elevated to the same status as the Imperial War Museum. Responding to a question from Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall, whose parents met while stationed at the Bletchley Park site during the war, the deputy chief whip of the House of Lords, Lord Davies of Oldham said that while the government was keen to support the site, there would be no moves to link the site to the Imperial War Museum
Pupils walked out of classrooms in protest against Big Brother-styled CCTV cameras recording their lessons. They were so angry with the installation of the equipment at Davenant Foundation School in Chester Road, Loughton, they refused to return until they received assurances it had been turned off. It meant they missed three weeks of studies and led to the drafting of a petition signed by about 150 of their peers. And when they did return to the classroom they all wore masks to continue their protest
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